1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the disclosure relate in general to the field of computers and similar technologies, and in particular to software utilized in this field. Still more particularly, it relates to managing power consumption in information processing systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
The costs associated with the energy required to power and cool today's information technology (IT) infrastructure continue to escalate. As the number of information processing systems continue to grow, these costs have become a significant issue, prohibiting business growth and reducing profit margins. At the same time, increases in energy consumption are placing unprecedented demands on a valuable and increasingly scarce resource.
One known approach to conserving energy within an IT infrastructure is processor folding. This technique is implemented by an operating system (OS), or a Hypervisor, to consolidate active processing loads to use the fewest possible number of processor cores. As processing loads are evacuated from a processor, they become idle, allowing them to enter lower power usage states, often referred to as a sleep state. However, one issue encountered with processor folding is the latency incurred when needing to unfold a processor, that is, revive it to recover from a low power state in order to accommodate either new processing loads or spikes in existing processing loads. As a result, the depth of a power saving state that can be used is limited and therefore the potential power savings that can be realized is reduced. Furthermore, current folding approaches have not been applied to other processing resources, such as memory and storage devices.